Heretofore, many products were separated and sorted by individual human operators who segregated the products for further processing. One of the drawbacks of this manual system of processing was that total processing time was a function of each human operator's familiarity with the product. An operator who was unfamiliar with the product or who was confronted with an unrecognized product would be forced to make a manual check to ensure proper separation. This resulted in delays in the separating and sorting process, reducing the daily throughput and cutting into the profits of the operation.
An additional drawback of the human operator sorting is its susceptibility to error. A bored or careless operator may fail to correctly separate bulk products. This reflects poorly on the operation both economically and in terms of customer goodwill.